Florence Nightingale's Feminist Complaint: Women, Religion, and "Suggestions for Thought"

Art, science and social science in nursing: occupational origins and disciplinary identity

“…Through conferences and congresses influential politicians would chair the various sections and feed deliberations into the various departments of government year the president would measure the success of the organization by the legislation prepared or passed and review that which remained to be achieved. 23 Reform of nurse training during the middle of the nineteenth century can be understood against the backdrop of the wider social scientific 'movement' aimed the relief of social evils in which poverty and crime were conflated with disease as threats to social stability. *" Poverty was perceived as an impediment to the moral development of the individual and social amelioration policies were promoted to generate self-reliance, industry, thrift, cleanliness and rationality among the lower orders.…”

Florence Nightingale

“…"Cassandra," then, is not a document in which Nigh tingale discusses how to remedy the woes that surroun ded women in Victorian England. Rather, as Showalter (1981) stated, it is a feminist complaint, full of frustration and anger. It is a call to action in which Nigh tingale cries out, "Awake, ye women, all ye that sleep, awake!"…”

“…By any standard, Fanny was demanding, conventional, and interested in the social amenities. Showalter (1981) has pointedly described her as ambitious, intellectually lazy, and emotionally infantile. It was Fanny's expectation that both daughters, having been raised in the model of the ideal woman, would marry well and be in socially prominent families of prestige and comfort (Vicinus, 1972).…”

“…It was published in 1928 as an app endix to Ray Strachey's (1928Strachey's ( /1978 The Cause: A Short History of the Women's Movement in Great Britain and then again as a separate publication by the Feminist Press in 1980. Neither of these editions contains the marginal notations of the original manuscript (Showalter, 1981(Showalter, , 1991. Termed a novel by Nightingale, although it is thought to be autobiogra phical, it describes the status and futility of being a woman in Victorian England.…”

“…This created a situation in which she found women difficult to trust and create relationships with. She was most productive when working through and with a series of influential men, including Sidney Herbert, Hugh Arthur Clough, John Stuart Mill, and John Sutherland (Calabria & Macrae, 1994;Cope, 1958;Showalter, 1981). The degree to which Nightingale's achievements can be measured relate to her nonconformist view of the prevailing social values relative to gender, as reflected in Table 1. Nightingale's most significant contribution to the promotion of the value of women's issues was the establishment of nursing as an educated profession that is separate and distinct from medicine.…”